According to the New York Observer, excitable Scientology heavyweight Tom Cruise might have gone and redeemed himself with his upcoming turn in Ben Stiller comedy Tropic Thunder:

… besides a high-powered cast, the movie has a secret, too, which Paramount and DreamWorks have been doing their best to keep under wraps until after the film opens: that a small, uncredited performance from Tom Cruise steals the whole show. In Tropic Thunder, Mr. Cruise plays Les Grossman, a bald, hirsute, foul-mouthed studio mogul with a penchant for hip-hop hip-swiveling moves. It’s an astonishingly funny and surprising supporting performance (especially considering Mr. Cruise’s last outing was in the dreadful, if well-meaning, Lions for Lambs) …

… Even two weeks before release, no one involved in the production—not Mr. Stiller or his co-writers, Justin Theroux and Etan Cohen, nor the producers or co-stars—are willing to talk about Mr. Cruise’s performance until after the film is in theaters. Mr. Cruise’s past directors won’t even talk. (It’s a lockdown!) But we’ll say it: Once again, Tom Cruise has managed to completely flip our perceptions of him upside down and inside out. It doesn’t spoil a thing to say that the film is worth seeing for Mr. Cruise’s performance alone, or that we hope this might usher in a new era for the strange, secretive actor. Could it be that, in fact, Tom Cruise actually gets it? Is it possible that Tom Cruise has a sense of humor about being Tom Cruise? Can we love him again without also feeling creeped out?

We say no, but we're looking forward to seeing him try. This is what Olympics years are all about.

Good news, everyone! Kanye West has yet another bone to pick with a random victim, but this time he forgot to use his caps lock key. Evidently Harper's Bazaar misrepresented a piece of artwork in Kanye's home in a feature on his decorating skills in the September 2007 issue. No, seriously. This was almost a year ago.

His delayed reaction via blog post says that the magazine staffers assumed a painting in his dining room depicted Kanye as an angel, but he's totally not like Ben Stiller's self-absorbed character in Dodgeball. First of all, how could anyone accuse Mr. West of being egotistical? Second, the thought of Kanye watching Dodgeball is a sight we would pay to see. Does he actually shut up for the entire 92 minutes or does he just hold up a mirror in front of the screen and admire himself?

The full (and slightly more coherent than usual) rant after the jump.

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Here's the trailer for Tropic Thunder, the upcoming comedy starring Ben Stiller, Jack Black, Nick Nolte and Robert Downey Jr, who, as you can see, is featured in blackface.

We've been worrying for a couple weeks that the blackface element might ruin a perfectly bad movie, but – and we're loath to admit this – we kinda, sorta don't mind it anymore. We even giggled at the line, "Man, just because it's a theme song don't make it not true."

Crisis: what to hate on now? Where's our steadfast indignation? How about we get disgusted about a war comedy during actual wartime? Yeah, that's the ticket. War isn't funny.

Though we're still not sure we're 100 percent at ease with it, there are two mitigating factors to consider before getting angry about Robert Downey Jr's turn in blackface in the upcoming film Tropic Thunder: 1) he looks authentically black, not cartoony and 2) when not in blackface, he's practically in whiteface. See what we mean after the jump.

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Robert Downey Jr is in blackface for his new role in the Ben Stiller comedy Tropic Thunder. Before you summarily condemn him, note that unlike the Afrocentric Angelina Jolie's turn in A Mighty Heart, Downey Jr isn't portraying a character of color; he's playing a white actor named Kirk Lazarus who's stupidly cast as a black soldier. To us, it's almost as if Thunder is making fun of Jolie. Whaddya think?

WELCOME BACK "Actor Owen Wilson will return to work next month, filming Marley & Me with co-star Jennifer Aniston in Miami, his first film since his suicide attempt at his Santa Monica home on Aug. 26. Since that dreadful day, Wilson has focused on recovery, dropping out of Ben Stiller-film Tropic Thunder and traveling with pal Woody Harrelson to Peru and Miami Beach."

This Saturday, groggy from NyQuil, I watched Ben Stiller's last film, The Heartbreak Kid, in its entirety. I didn't ROFL and I LOLed rarely, if at all; but, honestly, zonked out on pills and cough syrup, it wasn't awful. That's the best this guy's gotten from me since Permanent Midnight.

[Source]

After being hospitalized following a failed suicide attempt, Owen Wilson has dropped out of the comedic war movie Tropical Thunder, currently in production under the direction of Ben Stiller. In related news, the term "comedic war movie" just made us consider a suicide attempt.

[Source]

• Wait, wait, wait, wait, wait…Isaac dumped her? [DListed]

• Keira Knightley breaking the big news that Hollywood can be a superficial wasteland. Thanks for sharing that secret. [TB]

• Even Top models get taken advantage of [HT]

• Cruise and Stiller are teaming up on a movie. After that they're going to work on a new religion in which you get circumcised by an alien and then you can go to heaven. [Celebitchy]

• Jesus gave Mark Wahlberg his abs. The Devil gave him "Good Vibrations." [INO]

• See red in a whole new light. Just in time for V-day. [NYT]

• Keith Urban taking his sobriety out on some sad-ass oil painter. [Glitterati]

In 1999 Owen Wilson and Jack Black were not the household names that they are today. For this reason, someone over at Fox made the biggest mistake of their lives by not picking up a pilot directed by Ben Stiller and starring these two actors. Okay, fine, the premise of the show was completely ridiculous and may have only succeeded in ruining the careers of everyone involved. In the show, Jack Black played an astronaut with superhuman intelligence on the run from NASA and Owen Wilson was the voice of Heat Vision, Jack's talking motorcycle sidekick.

Thanks to the wonder of the internet, this pilot is now available in it's entirety. It may be long, but it's not like you're actually doing anything at work.